ABSTRACT
This paper describes and illustrates five new species of Gloeandromyces (Ascomycota, Laboulbeniales) associated with tropical American bat flies (Diptera, Streblidae). These are Gloeandromyces cusucoensis sp. nov. from Trichobius uniformis in Costa Rica and Honduras, G. diversiformis sp. nov. from Strebla wiedemanni in Costa Rica, G. plesiosaurus sp. nov. from Trichobius yunkeri in Panama, G. pseudodickii sp. nov. from Trichobius longipes in Ecuador and Panama, and G. verbekeniae sp. nov. from Strebla galindoi in Ecuador and Panama. The description of these five species doubles the number of known species in the genus. Morphological characteristics, host association, and a three-locus (18S nuc rDNA, 28S nuc rDNA, TEF1) phylogenetic reconstruction support placement of these taxa in the genus Gloeandromyces. Three of the new species are polymorphic; they have multiple morphotypes that grow in specific positions on the host integument: G. diversiformis f. diversiformis, f. musiformis, and f. vanillicarpiformis; G. plesiosaurus f. asymmetricus and f. plesiosaurus; and G. verbekeniae f. verbekeniae and f. inflexus. Finally, a dichotomous key to all species and morphotypes is presented.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Konstanze Bensch (Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute) for advice with the Code, Kanchi Gandhi (Harvard University Herbaria) for nomenclatural support, Joseph (Joey) R. Gerteisen (Purdue University) for his studies with bat fly specimens from Costa Rica, Genevieve E. Tocci (Farlow Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany) for taking photographs of slides deposited at FH, participants of the #TeamLaboul meetings for valuable comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript, and two reviewers for critical suggestions that improved the paper.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
Unedited images, final alignments, and unedited tree are available through GitHub: https://github.com/dannyhaelewaters/teamlaboul/tree/main/gloeandromyces_paper. Newly generated sequences were submitted to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) GenBank database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/), under the following accession numbers: OQ117043, OQ969945–OQ969950, OQ971589–OQ971602, OQ971686–OQ971699.